A Canadian in Lebanon

[tuvor]

JULIETTE SCHMIDT

Special to Globe and Mail Update

BEIRUT — I just spoke with a friend in Saida, a town 30 minutes south of Beirut on the coast. She says the grocery stores are emptying and they are selling 10-day mobile phone cards that usually cost $20 for more than $40.

Cabs going to Syria on the only remaining road out are charging as much as $800. But Saida is cut off. There is no power and almost no fuel there; gas stations are open only a few hours a day, so generators are off and cars useless. People have been sitting at home, often in the dark, for the past six days. It must be so much worse farther south. It is heart-wrenching to see a country still rebuilding from 15 years of civil war watching its infrastructure being bombed again, and graphic images of children and loved ones who have been killed in air strikes.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060718.wcomment0718/BNStory/International/

[Telly Savalas]

1. Is the story really about a Canadian

or just a person with Canadian citizenship?

[htuttle]

2. Would you care to explain the difference?

Does it have something to do with the color of their skin?

[Telly Savalas]

10. Answers

First question: see post #7
Second question: that probably plays a big part in it.

[tuvor]

3. Ba-dump, tshhhhh!

:)

[Spazito]

4. I am confused, I don't see the difference between a Canadian and

a person with Canadian citizenship, they are one and the same. Canadians have Canadian citizenship, period. Are you trying to ask if they were born Canadian or "just" a person with Canadian citizenship aka an imigrant to Canada and, if so, why would it make any difference anyway?

[Telly Savalas]

8. See post #7

I'm trying to land a job with the National Post.

[Spazito]

12. LOL, it was precisely that media slant that made me extra sensitive

to any hint of what they were trying to do. LOL re the National Post, you would have failed the interview, first, because you even added the possibility of a "real" Canadian reporting from Lebanon and, second, you responded to my questions? Both are no-nos for the Post.

[Jazz2006]

6. Whoa.

It seems that you may have some unusual criteria for discerning who is Canadian and who is not.

But if you'd actually read the story carefully, along with the byline, you'd see that the writer is
Juliette Schmidt, of Leamington, Ont., (who) is working in Beirut for an international non-governmental organization.

Edit to change the square brackets to round brackets - forgot that square brackets make the content between them disappear into the netherland of DU :)

[Telly Savalas]

7. It was a joke.

Some media scoundrels were trying to downplay the killings of the Canadians in Lebanon several days ago by not calling them "Canadians" but rather "people with Canadian citizenship".

[Jazz2006]

9. Ahh. I see.

Sorry to leap - it sounded odd without the additional info re: the media spin.

:hi:

Edit to add: I really thought that maybe you were under the weather or something because I read your posts on the Canada forum all the time and it seemed like such an out of character comment ~ I should have known it was a joke!

[Telly Savalas]

11. It's cool.

The context isn't obvious unless you've seen the spin, and it's certainly a leap-worthy issue.

:hi:

[Spazito]

5. Good article, from a very personal perspective instead of a political

one. Thanks for posting it.

[tuvor]

13. It's a "web-exclusive" that I happened to find on my PDA.

A real pain to find on the regular G/M website, so I had a hunch not too many of us had the opportunity to see it.

Glad you thought it was worth the effort.